Today we have another great Pyr author, Andrew Mayer, author of The Falling Machine. We’ll be giving away four copies of his book!

The Falling Machine: The Society of Steam, Book One by Andrew Mayer

In 1880 women aren’t allowed to vote, much less dress up in a costume and fight crime…

But twenty-year-old socialite Sarah Stanton still dreams of becoming a hero. Her opportunity arrives in tragedy when the leader of the Society of Paragons, New York’s greatest team of gentlemen adventurers, is murdered right before her eyes. To uncover the truth behind the assassination, Sarah joins forces with the amazing mechanical man known as The Automaton. Together they unmask a conspiracy at the heart of the Paragons that reveals the world of heroes and high-society is built on a crumbling foundation of greed and lies. When Sarah comes face to face with the megalomaniacal villain behind the murder, she must discover if she has the courage to sacrifice her life of privilege and save her clockwork friend.

The Falling Machine (The Society of Steam, Book One) takes place in a Victorian New York powered by the discovery of Fortified Steam, a substance that allows ordinary men to wield extraordinary abilities, and grant powers that can corrupt gentlemen of great moral strength. The secret behind this amazing substance is something that wicked brutes will gladly kill for and one that Sarah must try and protect, no matter what the cost.

When he’s not crafting stories, Andrew Mayer works as a video-game designer and digital entertainment consultant. He has created numerous new concepts, characters, and worlds, including the original Dogz and Catz digital pets. Andrew calls Portland, Oregon, home (although he’s been traveling a lot lately). You can find his musings on writing and media at www.andrewpmayer.com. This is his first novel.

The Writing Process by Andrew Mayer

If, back when I first started writing, someone had told me that my first published novel was going to be a Victorian era adventure about a girl and a mechanical man, I would have thought that they were nuts. I was, after all, going to be a Science Fiction Writer™. There was nothing I wanted to do more than tell amazing stories about spaceships, aliens, and far-away worlds that took place in humanity’s glorious future of unlimited galactic conquest. I was certainly wouldn’t been interested in becoming mired in some fantastical age of steam based on the past.

And my complaints wouldn’t have just been about the setting—writing pseudo-historical fiction is hard. You don’t just make things up, you have to look them up as well. And at some point in the process you find yourself researching details that can simply be invented in a story of the far future. You need to figure out the little things, like how people cleaned their teeth in 1880, the finer points of Victorian home heating systems, and whether or not the term gangster was actually used before the turn of the century.*

But right or wrong, easy or hard, I discovered that the story in my head that needed telling was a steampunk story. And I set about trying to write it.

Soon after starting I realized that I actually kind of liked researching things. There’s a great feeling that comes when you find the answer you’re looking for, whether it’s buried deep in the internet, or hidden in the pages of a dusty library book. And after a few months of uncovering these hidden historical gems, I discovered that that I’d done so much spelunking in the past that I either already knew the answers, or I knew exactly where to look.

Part of the skill of writing is accepting that motivation can come from the strangest places. Because starting a novel is easy, but to finish one you need to find a story that excites you enough to get your butt into the writing chair for the days, weeks, months, and years that it takes to drag your story from the first character description to final copy edit. You have to feel the passion for your fiction, and it’s that love that keeps pushing you to keep hitting the keys long after you’ve lost any sense of perspective, and to write some more after you’ve gained it back again. And it was as I wrote this story I discovered that I had a true passion for the Steampunk genre. And I wanted to not just tell a ripping tale, but also to try and write the kind of book that would infect people with my growing love for the genre.

And as I read the reviews for the book I’ve written I’m less concerned with whether someone “likes” it or not (although people who like it are nice) than discovering if I’ve managed to communicate my passion to the reader. And if I have, even just a little bit, it gives me the fuel to back and do it again. And the aliens will just have to wait a little longer…

* Europeans did use boar’s bristle toothbrushes in 1880, but brushing didn’t take off in American until around 1885.
Central heating was popular in wealthy Victorian homes because they believed still air caused diseases.Gangster is a perfectly fine word for the period, although it still doesn’t sound quite right to me.

What has been the strangest (or most difficult) thing you’ve had (or wanted) to research? We have four copies of The Falling Machine (The Society of Steam, Book One) to give away to four lucky commenters. You’ll have to wait to recieve your prize until May, but it’s open internationally.

12 Responses

I’m cheating, with steampunk, because I studied the Victorian novel in grad school, so the everyday life things are things I’m already immersed in — although the toothbrush thing is really interesting!

But I’m setting part of one project in the ever-cliched airship, and I find myself wanting to know more about how that would *feel* and generally how one *works*. Even bought a reprint of an old government technical manual re. Airship dynamics on Amazon, though most of it is math, so I pretty much can only make sense of the first couple of chapters!

I love researching history and have always done my best to be as accurate as possible but since most of my stories are contempory, I love to twist them and tweak them to my purpose.

Currently, I’m researching Aztec history. Learning the gods, the warriors, the beliefs of old and the culture of modern Aztecs today. The best part is learning about the weapons that the warriors used. I watched a video on Spike TV that showed how an ancient Aztec sword was weilded. The scientist demonstrated how the weapon could decapitate a horse’s head. They used a fake one of course. It was amazing how this nearly 1000 year old wood and obsidian weapon was so powerful. Considering ancient man was 10x’s stronger than today’s human, such a weapon in a jagaur warrior’s hands could be devastating.

I am looking to try my hand at steampunk. There is so much information out there that it is a bit daunting where to start. Books are good but I think I like going out and finding those precious gems and seeing them and touching them. It is the ultimate thrill.

I went to an avaition and areospace museum on Long Island in NY and they have an entire area dedicated to early inventions of airplanes and cars. Totally fascinating. I took pictures and notes. I think the cars fascinated me the most. They had everything from steam to electric to pedal power to hand cranked. It boggles the mind why in the end we chose gasoline!

The house of Tesla is on LI too. The 180 ft. tower stands there and inside there is the Tesla project still preserved, although most of all his other invetions are gone, what a shame. I also went to a turn of the century vineyard that has an open glass viewing window that shows how early grapeg rowers tested and blended wines and still today use ancient methods with mixing flavors before aging the blend in barrels. The lab looks like something straight out of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstien.

My kids think I am crazy but they view it as field trips and always have fun.

I’ve been challenged researching clean coal and other carbon cleaning tech because it’s still under development so finding actual factual data is really hard. But the hardest would likely be researching planetary travel times for my space opera. It was a universe I invented with two suns and 13 planets revolving around one sun. I had to consider gravitational effect of the second sun, reasonable planetary locations, size, makeup, etc. It was a lot of work, especially considering many of these details aren’t needed in the book itself.

I’m thinking about trying my hand at steampunk. I love the artistry, but the research has kind of scared me away. Pop sci has a great archive post on airships lots of pics and details for the enthusiast.

Hahaha, I can definitly understand your sentiments about research. Oftentimes, when I go to research one thing, I end up going off on so many tangents I forget what I was researching in the first place. It’s just so fun! At the moment, I’m engrossed in names- their meanings, more specifically- and locations- mainly the geography of the Alps and Georgia (the state, not the country). Completely random subjects, but both are fascinating. Especially the names.

I’m afraid I haven’t researched anything recently, but I’ll definitely check this book out; the description certainly sounds intriguing. I’m particularly interested to see how different Mayer’s take on the steampunk/superhero mashup is from Al Ewing’s (“Gods of Manhattan”).